All about the United Kingdom’s national, regional and local press

Johnston Press

20 March 2013

Johnston Press is Britain’s second largest publisher of newspapers, and the largest publisher that doesn’t have a UK-wide national newspaper in its portfolio – indeed, it’s the only such publisher listed on the London Stock Exchange. It also arguably has the widest geographical spread of all the publishers, with subsidiaries covering most of Great Britain from the North East of Scotland to southern England (but omitting Wales, the West Country, the West Midlands and London) and Northern Ireland, making it the only regional publisher to cover both sides of the Irish Sea.

History

JP’s rise began slowly. It began in 1767 as a Falkirk-based printing company and didn’t become a publishing house until nearly 80 years later, when it acquired the Falkirk Herald in 1846. It wasn’t until 1970, with the acquisition of Fife-based Strachan & Livingston, that it expanded significantly beyond the Falkirkshire area.

Further noteworthy expansions since then have included Halifax Courier Ltd in 1994, JP’s first acquisition of a daily newspaper; EMAP’s newspapers spanning much of northern East Anglia and the eastern East Midlands in 1996; Portsmouth & Sunderland Newspapers in 1999; Local Press Ltd (45 titles in Scotland and across the island of Ireland) in 2005; and The Scotsman Publications in 2006.

Recent developments

As with the rest of the industry, JP has been hit by the general economic downturn globally and by the diversion of advertising revenue from the print media to the Web. In March 2013 it reported that it had cut nearly a quarter of its workforce in 2012 – although it was also able to point to a 9% reduction in its net debt and an operating profit of just over £40 million, having made an operating loss of nearly £110m in 2011.

Its decision in June 2011 to cut 18 jobs at South Yorkshire Newspapers led to a strike by NUJ staff employed by SYN. The editor of the South Yorkshire Times, Jim Oldfield, took the bold step of reporting the strike on his newspaper’s pages, but was himself declared redundant in August after four weeks of the strike. The industrial action was eventually called off after eight weeks after SYN agreed to negotiate. Oldfield went on to be involved with an online-only publication, the Postcode Gazette.

Ownership

As of 2011 the largest shareholder was Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan’s investment company, PanOcean Management, with a 20 per cent stake in JP, followed by Orbis Holdings (10.7 per cent) and Jupiter Asset Management (4.6 per cent). Rival publisher Tindle Newspapers increased its holding in November 2011 to 4.36 per cent; subsequent purchases to May 2012 took it to 8 per cent, making it the third-largest shareholder.